In Blear Of Night

in blear of night it comes to me

in tobacco ember light

hurled from the palm of some interplanetary god cometlike

& I stand stunned & stunted on the red rooftop

arms extended receiving

beckoning with index fingertips

aiming it here calling it here summoning it here

in blear of night it comes

a need of me

it substantiates me

leaves me kneeling bleeding from my temples

this my temple

it comes in half-formed shapes of timid long-legged women

hair trailing across the late blackness

comet-formed like white fire, endless snow dissolving

the stars shooting at me – the stars are missing, drifting away

in ancient days

all my awe needed was a high place

an access ladder for my skull to climb

& there was input from other orbits

hitchhiking on the light of miniscule stars

there down low where the wind finds horizon

a radiation of information

bombarding me & melting me

making mutations to my cellular structure

addicting me synaptically to a poetry of an alien nature

it fuses me to some hideous archetype perfection

welds me to it through fire of far suns

how hydrogen heals in helium, how infinity expands

how malformed millennia made me thirsty

in ancient days, I say, I saw ghosts of galactic pantheons

right there where the telephone wire wanes

& the low window lamp halo fades

they aimed at me; they blamed me for daylight

cascaded their insignia across my forehead

in blear of night it comes

but lately it deftly leaps by

I see it streaking past me

leaving dust trails like roadrunners bending the rubber concrete

in clearly defined celluloid existences bounded by familiar music

where animals travel like electrons holding comical signs

traveling not by step-by-step progression

but by means of some instantaneous triumphant teleportation

& I a coyote incapable of chasing them

only able to look down and realize

--gravity is a construct of mind—

&, thus instructed, fall flailing forever into canyons of dying dust

doomed only by the conceptualization of that doom

the knowledge that there is no earth, only ether beneath

fragment of an asteroid cathedral

in blear of night it comes to me

I don’t know what it is

it manifests as midnight roosters, as crickets, as faraway traffic, as bookshelves

I am enlarged by loud silence but not naked enough to know

& seeking someone weary to watch with me

& act as interpreter & liaison to the light

I have no other name for it

but Origin, Incomprehensible, the Sunburn

I am faltering in the curvature of this instant

aging by instinct, only slower

training myself to tame time

& make it balance beach balls for me

trying to articulate the cacophony in simple syllables

& manufacture a manuscript

that will present me with detailed instructions

to free me from the need for negotiation or navigation

transport me to the surface of a gaseous planet

& allow me to linger in a levitating stasis

absorbing, absolving, making me translucent

immune to the torrents of the skin

there must be a Something

there must be somewhere to go

the light is slowing down

lattice of nothingness

consolidation of tumultuous pauses

in blear of night it comes to me

it makes me a solid object

void of voids, constellation of remembrances

footfall of Shiva dancing in soft sand

I am created here

thickened & given edges by vibratory violence

when the late light leaves

in blear of night

under mobile skies

clouds dangling from insubstantial space

by insubstantial strings

a string from my skull to the heavens

it is a many-limbed puppeteer

I don’t know what it is

I am jerked & jostled in my sleep

on the red rooftop I stand stunned & stunted

a pair of left-handed scissors aloft

gleaming in the dark

I cut the string

& yet & still I dangle

rotating with limbs contorting, thwarting my will

attached by nothing to nothingness

but attached

a construct of mind

appearing to be a complete being

in tricks of light

in blear of night it comes